My first tip for 2026 is the same tip I would have given in 2016: win sales first for viewers. It’s not a new concept, but with AI search, agent search, and how discovery is breaking out across platforms, it’s more important than ever.
The only way to thrive through these shifts is to deeply understand how the people you’re trying to reach search for and discover brands. That sounds easy. However, it is not what most brands do.
Read how I would go about solving this, or watch the full discussion here.
Human Problem
Most products are not knowingly bad WHO their audience. But the traditional human map produces very general results. There is a meme comparing Ozzy Osbourne and Prince Charles. On a personal map, they look the same. A long time ago. English. He is rich. But clearly, they are on to very different things.
That’s the core problem with only using focus groups and statistical buckets to understand your audience. You take 10 to 20 people, weed them out, and you end up with people who look accurate on paper but tell you nothing about how people behave.
Optimization uses real-world search data to map what your audience really cares about and how their needs appear in their searches on whatever search platform they use.
How to calculate the audience for search data
What I recommend is to really understand the entire customer search journey.
Say you are a shoe company. If someone is a nurse on their feet all day, they have a very specific need: shoes that last a long time. You start mapping that to what someone in that position might search for.
But you don’t stop at Google. That nurse may have been influenced by the creator of TikTok who may be a nurse, or go to an Amazon review search and search for “nurse” to see if other nurses like them. You can pull search data from all these platforms and begin to understand how that audience member searches and is influenced throughout the journey.
Then tie it back to the goal. What type of content and what call to action makes sense where that person is in their journey? At Brainlabs, we call this process our own Digital Signal Analyzerand this is where the real strategy begins.
Buying intent is important, but it’s not the only goal. We know that product decisions can be made even when someone is not in the market. The key is mapping the right content to the right time.
Why This Matters So Much in the Age of Search AI
Every product should have a large audience. In my experience, that’s what often drives brand success. I can break down your search journey and keyword research by each audience, and put those into your strategy individually.
The later stages of the buyer’s journey may converge. But because you’re targeting different audiences, the top of the funnel (landing pages, messaging, content formats) should be different.
This is very important for AI search. Someone from ChatGPT or another LLM usually logs in. AI remembers previous searches, and Gemini now features personalized searches. If it knows that this person is a high-income nurse who likes to hike, it will recommend a different shoe than what appears in a typical Google search for “nursing shoes.”
That is the value of knowing your audience continuously and creating personalized content that shows AI search engines who is helping them.
Start Where Your Audience Already Is
Understanding your audience means extending the research beyond Google. I always start with the same tools SparkToro to see which social channels and platforms the audience spends time on.
Reddit, for example, used to be a big deal. Its rise in Google search results has been significant, and it is one of the most cited sources within LLMs. Your audience is already there, having real conversations about the things you want to be known about. That’s the bridge that needs to be built between organic strategy and where real impact happens.
Brands Will Win
Technology is improving. AI search is here. Agent search is coming. But the basic truth has not changed.
The brands that will thrive are the ones that stop treating people as demographics and start treating them as behavioral maps. Those who extend research beyond Google. Those who understand their audience well enough to meet them wherever they are, whether it’s Reddit, TikTok, or an AI agent making decisions.
Start with the audience. That’s just not good SEO. That’s good marketing.
